(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor memory card for recording digital data representing audio data or image data, an apparatus for recording data onto the semiconductor memory card, and an apparatus for reproducing data stored on the semiconductor memory card.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
A typical rewritable recording medium for recording digital data that has come into wide use is an MD (Mini Disc). Portable MD recording/reproducing apparatuses that can record audio information from music CDs have also become prevalent.
Typical MDs have approximately 140 MB of storage capacity and can record approximately 74 minutes of music by recording compressed digital audio data. MDs can also record up to approximately 1,700 characters of information for showing tune titles, a disc title and the like, as well as audio information. The recorded character information often includes a mixture of hankaku katakana (Japanese alphabet) characters, alphabets, numerals, and signs. It should be noted here that katakana characters that are used for computers are classified into hankaku katakana and zenkaku katakana characters. The hankaku katakana characters are represented by 1-byte character codes and displayed with a half width of zenkaku katakana. The zenkaku katakana characters are represented by 2-byte character codes. MD recording/reproducing apparatuses that can record hiragana (Japanese alphabet) characters and kanji characters (Chinese characters) have recently become commercially available.
However, the above-described conventional techniques have a problem in that MD reproducing apparatuses (of the types that do not have Chinese character fonts), which can display only hankaku katakana characters, alphabets, numerals, and signs, cannot properly display hiragana and Chinese characters that are recorded on recording mediums. With such apparatuses, users cannot recognize tune titles and the like.